Page 62 of The Hero Within
Easing open the door, she slipped inside. A candle burned in the corner, and a form melded out of the shadows. Nnedi. The other woman looked up when she entered.
"Couldn't stay away." Nnedi shook her head. "He'll be fine."
"Would you stay away, if this was one of yours?" Eden asked, slinking onto the bed beside CJ.
They'd stripped him of his shirt, and a yellow stain marked his skin where the single scratch bloomed against the swollen flesh. She still couldn't believe such a tiny mark had felled him.
"No." Nnedi snorted.
"You're a healer?" Eden asked, looking at the pestle and mortar the other woman was working.
"My mother was a healer," Nnedi replied. "I'm a warrior, but she taught me what she knew, and I'm the one they turn to when we need field dressings or combat medicine. Wargs don't get sick, in general, but there are a few humans among the pack—those who don't want to be infected, or those who are too young—so we have a few healers here. I volunteered, however."
CJ twisted on the bed, wracked by fever dreams.
Eden soothed his sweaty dark hair off his forehead. "He should be getting better."
Wargs could heal from almost anything.
Nnedi ground something into a paste. "It’s the poison in the shadow cat's claws. It kills a human instantly, but it takes longer to kill a warg. Most of the time we can push through it, but occasionally it’s too strong. I need to draw it out."
"But Colton was hurt too." And his claw marks faded, once she’d bandaged them. "His injuries were deeper than CJ’s, and yet they seem to have healed by now. Completely."
"This," Nnedi said, pointing to the reddened flesh around CJ’s claw marks, "is from a female. The male’s spurs are laced with enough poison to wound and irritate, but the female’s poison is lethal. It’s so they can protect their cubs. Your man must have been slashed by a male."
"How long will it take for him to heal?"
Nnedi shrugged. "A couple of days. I need to draw the poison, and give him a chance for the wolf within to heal him."
Days?Eden looked up in dismay. "But…."
Nnedi seemed to read her mind. "You cannot force him from his bed any earlier, or you might kill him. Even now, it might be too late. He needs time and rest."
They didn’t have time. But she couldn't allow CJ to suffer. Eden sat on the edge of the bed, and tucked CJ’s hand in hers. What were they going to do? "How far is it to the other side of the Divide?"
"The Confederacy side? An hour. Then half a day to the top."
The timing was growing tight.
Eden swallowed the lump in her throat and squeezed CJ’s hand. She needed him with her. When she'd set out on this quest, he'd been her voice of reason, her shadow. Without him....
She'd be alone with Colton.
And judging from the tension between them today, that would be disastrous.
"What's the rush?" Nnedi asked.
Eden took a deep breath. "Have you ever heard of the salt plague?"
Nnedi looked up from her pestle. "No."
"It's a bacterial infection that was genetically engineered by the Confederacy, according to one of their defectors. One of their generals was testing it on human subjects when another general found out. The project was shut down, I think, but... it somehow found its way to the Wastelands. According to the defector, there might be a cure in Cortez City.
"Nnedi," she pleaded, grabbing the other woman's wrist. "We can't stay here. If we do, then my family and friends will die and there's no hope for the rest of my settlement. We're not a threat to your pack. I promise we won't breathe a word of you to anyone. But we have to get moving. Ineedto find that cure."
Nnedi's lips thinned. "That is not an answer I can give you."
A knock sounded at the door, and a stranger poked their head inside. "Nnedi? Arik's back."
